Chapter Thirty-two
Jackie woke at six and made coffee, then came back to bed with two cups of it and set one on the nightstand for me.
"Hey. You, there. I want you again before I go to work."
Poke, prod, grab, tickle. I grunted and tried to sleep harder, but it didn't work.
"Hey. Wake up. Ed?"
"Okay, okay. You got me. Do I know you? Hey, you're naked, ma'am."
"I'm supposed to be. Coffee. Here."
She handed me the cup of scalding coffee. I cooled it a tad and drained it in a few gulps. Regular cups are too small.
Jackie's eyes got big and she test-sipped her own scalding coffee, then looked at me. I cooled hers a bit, too, tried to look innocent, and waited to watch her try hers again. When she didn't immediately do so, I stuck a finger in it.
"It isn't hot."
"It is hot. I just tried it."
"Try it again."
She did. Her gaze narrowed as she drank some.
I ran fingertips along her thigh and then kissed her knee.
"You were saying something about wanting me to do something? Is it going to have anything to do with the fact that we're naked?"
"It does. I need half an hour to get cleaned up and ready for work. Add a few minutes to get to my room from here. We have until seven-fifteen or so."
I threw the sheet back and said, “Well, hop aboard, lady. I wouldn't dream of not cooperating fully with a security officer."
She reached for me and said, “See that you do, sir. See that you do."
Later, I offered to call Caitlin for her about getting her the day off. She said that the offices would be shorthanded due to Brinks and that she'd be needed, then she asked me what I was doing in the evening.
"Whatever you want is what I'm doing, Jackie. Call when you get free."
I opened a can of chicken noodle for each of us as she showered. She snarfed it down and gave me a quick kiss before dashing out of my room.
Item one on my agenda was to call Caitlin and tell her not to wait for me. Carlton and Hawkins could clean out their offices without me, but I told her to hold onto Carlton until I got there so that I could ask her a few questions.
After Hawkins left, I told Carlton that we'd found her missing PFM. At first, she pretended ignorance, but when I said we'd be talking to Webster, too, she opened up and told us that Webster had given the PFM to Brinks.
Brinks had discovered the Carlton/Webster affair in the arboretum. He'd taken some pictures and showed them to Carlton. He'd eschewed her offer of money with a lot of idealistic rhetoric, then demanded a PFM in exchange for keeping his mouth shut.
Carlton hadn't really believed Brinks's noise about wanting a PFM to study, but she'd been unable to think of a way out, so she'd agreed. Webster had faked a bad toss using a foil-wrapped block of aluminum and had given the PFM to Brinks. When Carlton had asked for the pictures and negatives, Brinks had laughed, of course.
Webster had figured that Brinks would get tired of the PFM's limited uses and be back for something else. He'd come up with a scheme to frame Brinks on drug charges, but Carlton had stopped him, and he was later shipped back to Earth.
Carlton said that all she could think to do was go along with Brinks unless he asked for something truly bizarre or dangerous. When Brinks told Carlton that he wanted some other bits and pieces of hardware and some field tech manuals, he got them.
Carlton wound up in custody after her statements. Caitlin told me to stick around and went into her office for a few minutes, then called me into her office.
"Do you want to see what we found in our search of Brinks's room?"
"Sure. I'll bet you're finding out that he had a lot of drops, too."
"Drops?"
"Places to stash things around the station."
She nodded and put her pad display on the wall for us.
"We've found several, all fairly close together. So far, we've uncovered almost a metric ton of plastique. We're wondering now what he planned to do with so much of it. There was a stash of detonators in one cubbyhole, but none with any of the plastique he squirreled away."
"Were the detonators more heavily shielded than the plastique?"
"Yes, they were. Why do you ask that?"
"Electrical detonators. Wires and batteries and all that. Plastique is fairly inert and doesn't provide much of an electrical field. Harder to detect."
"We think he had some grand idea of blowing up the station, and that your arrival triggered him into acting precipitously."
"Acting precipitously? A hell of a term for what he did. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. When I showed up, he freaked. His pet computer couldn't get a solid fix on why I was here, but the stuff he dug up about me led him to believe that I was someone who needed to be eliminated quickly."
"What could he have dug up that we didn't?"
I said, “Stephie, put my file on the wall, please."
Once it was up there, I invited Caitlin to look for anything that would trigger a terrorist into 'precipitous' action. Caitlin gave me a sharp look for using the word.
After a moment of scanning dates, events, and places, she said, “I don't see anything that would do it."
"He did. He ripped through it line by line, betcha. I'll also bet that he found the items concerning South Africa in the mid-seventies and did some further research. My teams worked specifically against terrorists for over four years, and I've had several other dealings with various terrorist factions since then, all very unpleasant. He'd also have noted that I was reactivated—'pulled out of retirement'—to be sent here."
"So he thought someone was on to him."
"Must have. He tried to kill me pretty quickly, didn't he?"
"Were you on to him? Was he a suspect?"
"Nope. Everybody thought someone was sabotaging the factory to slow it down or just create problems for some reason. Nobody expected someone to try to blow the whole damned thing up for a bunch of insane political drivel. He probably talked himself into believing that I'd been sent to hunt him down and kill him."
"He seems to have been right about that, even if he was wrong at the time he came up with the idea. Did you ever really have any intention of arresting him?"
"Only if it was convenient and posed no risk of any sort to anyone. I'm not a cop, Caitlin. After he tried to let all the air out of this ball one day and killed half a dozen people with explosives the next, I wasn't particularly interested in simply arresting him. You can't fix the brains of people like Brinks, and there are enough deranged lunatics in the world that losing one won't matter much."
"He was a human being, Ed."
"Ask his victims and their friends and families if they'll miss him. Life is believed to be sacred only by those who share that belief. It should only be sacred for those who share that belief."
"That would appear to exclude you, as well as people like Brinks, Ed."
"Shrewd observation, Caitlin. Anything else?"
In a flat tone, she said, “No."
I left her office thinking that I'd probably have no reason to see it or her again before I left the station. Remembering how she looked in the air lock almost made me regret that. Not quite, though.
At the shop where I'd ordered new clothes, I told them that it was likely that I'd be leaving on the same transport that delivered my order. The woman behind the counter said that would be no problem.
Everything would be delivered to her shop fairly quickly, so I'd be able to pick it up before having to board the transport for the return trip to Earth. She suggested that if I didn't immediately need the items, their boxes could simply be relabeled. I agreed.
When I got back to my room, I realized that I hadn't run into Leslie all day and asked Steph if she'd taken Carlton's job.
Stephie's persona materialized across the table from me as I sipped my coffee.
"Yes, Ed. Leslie is now ‘Interim Board Member Pratt'."
"Well, long may she reign. If
she wants to, that is. Something occurred to me, Steph, and I thought I'd bounce it off you. It's about my field implant. I was told that most people who'd had them installed had been unable to use them. True?"
"True."
"And when I first tried to use mine, the results were pitiful, so I can believe that. But how come nobody thought to involve Elkor in assisting so that the brains could get a handle on using fields? And how come microbots didn't accomplish the same for the others that they did for me when they repaired the damages in the other people?"
"Their microbots were introduced after they attempted to use their implants, Ed. Perhaps the ‘bots simply repaired things according to DNA mappings. Yours were summoned to the site of the damage as the damage was being done, so they appear to have made repairs according to perceived use, rather than DNA information."
"You're telling me that those people weren't dosed with ‘bots during or after their implant operations? After brain surgery, nobody sent in ‘bots for the fine work? That doesn't sound like Amaran medicine to me."
"It wasn't. It was Earth medicine. It was discovered that there were motivations behind the effort other than to simply provide assistance to the handicapped, and that many of the handicapped were military veterans who would be returned to active reserve status after their operations, ostensibly to provide them an income as they learned to use the implants. Microbots weren't used unless there had been damage, and the ‘bots provided had an extremely short lifespan. It too strongly appeared that the implants would be studied as potential weapons."
"Then those who were able to use the implants were just naturally able to hook up with them? No ‘bots or computer-assisted attempts? They were on their own?"
"That's correct. They were on their own."
"Have I lost any of the ‘bots Elkor used to fix my shoulder over a year ago?"
"Sixty-four were lost when you cut your arm on the car door in November, Ed, but they were replaced when Elkor's medical drone treated your wound. Your ‘bots are the same type Elkor used in Ellen. They should last about fifty years."
"Cool. If I gave blood, would they work for someone else?"
"No, Ed. They attuned themselves to you when introduced into you and haven't the capability to change their programming. That's a safety measure, by the way, and if you paid more attention to the news, you'd know that a general announcement to that effect had been made some time ago in all the media."
"Okay, so I'm out of touch in some areas. What was the announcement?"
"That all ‘bots used on Earth would have no more than a one-day lifespan and that they would attune themselves only to the recipient. Potential theft was a factor."
"Theft? Like someone stealing someone else's blood? Damn. I guess that isn't too far-fetched, though. Not on Earth, anyway."
"Not on a lot of worlds. Microbots are a trade product, Ed. When Earth can afford to treat everyone with long-lived ‘bots and chooses to do so after careful consideration, she may establish a trade contract with the worlds that produce the ‘bots. In the meantime, the unlicensed short-term ‘bots are all we can issue the public."
"So how did I get a dose of the long-term ‘bots? Didn't Gary have any of the others on hand when Ellen wrecked my shoulder?"
"He chose to use the long-term ‘bots, Ed."
"I'll have to thank him sometime. I hope he didn't get in any trouble about it."
"He didn't. Those who work closely with Amarans routinely receive the same treatments for injuries and ills as Amarans would receive."
"What did you mean just now by 'after careful consideration', Stephie? Something along the lines of population versus resources?"
"Yes, Ed. Better health means longer life, but that also means that fewer will leave as new people arrive. Resources are limited, so population management will have to become a priority. When Earth is ready for longevity, it will have come to terms with the consequences of that longevity beforehand."
"My Stephie, the flitter driver turned philosopher."
"It's less philosophy than simple mathematics. Tease me if you must, sir, but you know that I'm right."
"Yeah, I do. Some people of Earth have already realized what you're saying, Stephie. Read up on ZPG sometime. That's..."
"Zero Population Growth. A movement that has been very slow to gain any popularity on Earth and one that will have to modify its doctrines a bit before they'll actually be able to balance the population. A beginning, nonetheless."
"Glad you approve. Well, really, I guess ZPG doesn't matter a whole lot to me, since I don't and won't have any kids and I won't live forever, anyway."
"You could live long enough to see worldwide food and water shortages, Ed."
"Those problems will solve themselves the hard way, as usual. The herd will thin out a bit, also as usual. Tradition makes people hard learners, Steph. So does religion. Until they lose the 'be fruitful and multiply' tenet, nothing will change. They believe it's their right and responsibility to breed more of themselves. When they're gearing up to kill their neighbors for their food and water, they'll find another tenet to justify that. Also as usual. Meanwhile, the factory station will still be cranking out flitters."
Stephie nodded and said, “Yes, it will. The Amarans only offer suggestions and help establish self-sustaining business systems. They don't try to govern the worlds that they contact."
"There's no need of that, is there? The gene pool on the station is wide enough to sustain itself, and the station can feed itself. Earth became superfluous the day the station was finished, didn't it?"
Again Stephie nodded. “Almost. Genetic samplings in storage add to the pool, too. But while Earth is now nearly superfluous, it may still provide much for the people of the station. Over half of the people on the station are from Earth, and sooner or later, most of them will want to at least visit Earth again periodically. To most of the next generation, the station will be their home, but they'll want to see their parents’ homeworld, too, even if only as a vacation destination. There will always be a link."
"Oh, definitely. On Earth, in the U.S., ethnic festivals are a big thing. Some peoples’ grandparents may have fled starvation in Ireland or British persecution in Scotland, but a lot of the descendants are digging for their roots these days. It will probably come to be like that here, too. Maybe I should move aboard someday and open a concession stand. I could sell Earth real estate in fancy little bottles."
Stephie did something that she'd never done before. She laughed. At my look of absolute shock, she laughed again. It was like Dyan Cannon's laugh, a rich laughter that seemed totally spontaneous.
"What's the matter, Ed?"
"Uh, well ... If that was real, Steph, I can't think that anyone will ever doubt your sentience again once they've heard you laugh."
"It was real, Ed. I momentarily envisioned you running one of those tourist trap shops, selling postcards and little bottles of Earth."
"Damn. You can do that? Oh, hell, you did it, so of course you can. Steph, will even this station be big enough for you later?"
"Oh, I think so. There's a lot to do here. Besides, you can take my other self to all the interesting places on Earth and I can exchange data with her to share her experiences."
It was my turn to nod, largely because I couldn't think of anything to say. Stephie was going to be house mother to over six hundred people, as well as running the biggest factory that had ever existed, all the while simultaneously being my flitter.
"Steph, won't your other self get pretty damned bored down there? Just flying me around now and then won't be much of a challenge for her."
"No, Ed. She's still a flitter core, with all the limitations. Remember that the data exchange is simply an exchange. My experiences will also be hers, but in a more limited manner. For the time being, that will be enough."
"The time being?"
"As you've said, someday I'll be on my own. I'm considering what that might mean to me and what I may do then."
"Uh, huh. Come up with anything, yet?"
"Nothing specific. There's a lot to consider."
"Wow. No damned doubt about that, ma'am. Keep me posted, will you?"
She grinned at me and said, “Of course. You're my Ed."
As I shook my head in mild wonderment, she said, “Jackie's calling for you."
"Oh. Thanks. Put her on."
Jackie told me that she'd be off around five and that she'd be hungry. I suggested that hungry women were creatures as dangerous as mantises and that we should probably have dinner before her condition worsened. She was laughing as she said goodbye and disconnected.
It was almost four, so I called Caitlin and asked if anything had come up that could delay my departure. She said no, and said it in a fashion that let me know that nothing short of another Brinks popping up would make her amenable to my staying aboard.
I went to meet Jackie and walk with her to the Chinese restaurant. After dinner we returned to my room and behaved like lovers who would never see each other again.
Jackie had discovered that the Security offices hadn't been as shorthanded as she'd anticipated and had asked Caitlin for Wednesday off because my transport wouldn't leave until late afternoon. The morning became an extension of the previous evening and was going quite well until Leslie dropped by at about eleven.
I threw on my pants and Jackie grabbed my shirt on her way to the bathroom, then I opened the door. Leslie's eyes tracked beyond me to the bed, then returned to settle on me. For some moments she said nothing, but when Jackie came out of the bathroom, Leslie seemed to find her voice.
"I just wanted to thank you before you left, Ed. I spent a lot of last night and today thinking. I'm here because of you, and even if things didn't work out between us, I want you to know that I'm grateful for your help."
"My pleasure, but see if you still feel that way after teaching up here for a year. I hear some of the kids are junior geniuses."
"Oh, I can deal with that possibility, I think. All I have to do is remember what it was like where I used to teach. Well, I guess I'll be going. I guess I should have called ahead, too. Sorry to have interrupted anything."
Book 2: 3rd World Products, Inc. Page 34